Abstract Examinations of chromosome number voucher specimens show that sexual diploid and agamospermous polyploid plants of Eupatorium in Asia can be distinguished by morphology, fertility, and stainability of pollen grains. Using these criteria, reproductive systems (sexual vs. agamospermous) were estimated for 558 herbarium specimens of Eupatorium in East Asia. Of 22 taxa examined, six included both sexual and agamospermous specimens; those of one taxon were all agamospermous; and those of 15 taxa were all sexual. This result shows that 21 taxa are not agamospermous microspecies but are differentiated at the diploid level. Sexual populations of most taxa had restricted geographical distributions. Eupatorium chinense var. chinense and var. oppositifolium consisted of both sexual and agamospermous populations. Sexual populations of these two varieties were allopatric and distinct in external morphology, suggesting differentiation at the species level. The specimens of E. heterophyllum s. str. were all agamospermous, while those of E. mairel, often treated as synonymous with E. heterophyllum, were sexual.

In comparing East Asian and North American Eupatorium for the distributional patterns of sexual and agamospermous populations, three differences can be pointed out: (1) Agamospermous plants of autopolyploid origin have evolved in eight species and are widespread in North America; while most agamospermous plants in East Asia may be of allopolyploid origin, have relatively restricted ranges, and are less frequent than the diploid plants with the exception of in E. chinense var. oppositifolium, (2) The number of sexual species with wide range is greater in North America than in East Asia. (3) The number of sexual species with restricted ranges is greater in East Asia than in North America. The results obtained suggest that speciation among the plants of Eupatorium has occurred more recently in East Asia than in North America.


This study aims to investigate the relationship between prospective teachers' level of performing behaviors related to learning responsibility and their level of readiness for teaching profession. The pre-service teachers (n = 408), who are in their second year at the Faculty of Education, filled in the Learning Responsibility Scale and the Readiness Scale for Teaching Profession. The Learning Responsibility Scale consists of 28 Likert-type questions and includes the subscales entitled preparation for learning, active engagement in learning, monitoring learning outcomes and enriching learning. Pearson's correlations and multiple linear regression analyzes were used to analyze the data. The results of the analysis revealed that there was a negative by moderately significant relationship between the prospective teachers' learning responsibilities and their readiness for teaching profession. In addition, it was found out that the variables of learning responsibility explained 12% of the variation in prospective teachers' scores of readiness for the profession. Active engagement in learning contributed negatively to explain the prospective teachers' readiness for teaching profession.


An efficient chlorotrimethylsilane-promoted synthetic protocol for the preparation of functionalized fused β-trifluoromethyl pyridines by cyclization of electron-rich aminoheterocycles or substituted anilines with a trifluoromethyl vinamidinium salt was developed. The efficient and scalable approach for producing represented trifluoromethyl vinamidinium salt demonstrated huge prospects for further use. The structure specificities of the trifluoromethyl vinamidinium salt and their impact on the reaction progress were determined. The procedure's scope and alternative ways of the reaction were investigated. The possibility of increasing the reaction scale up to 50 g and further modification of obtained products was shown. A minilibrary of potential fragments for 19F NMR-based fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) was synthesized.


The aim of this study is to develop mathematical model for Weibull deterioration of items in inventory in declining market when the supplier offers his retailers a credit period to settle the accounts against the dues. The computational steps are explored for a retailer to determine the optimal purchase units which minimize the total inventory cost per time unit. The numerical examples are given to demonstrate the retailer's optimal decision. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to study the variations in the optimal solution. JEL. Classification: C61; C63; D81;


A high-voltage LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 cathode material with a cubic spinel structure is synthesized using a citric-acid-assisted sol–gel process. Butylmethylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (BMP-TFSI)-based ionic liquids (ILs) with various kinds of Li salts, namely LiTFSI, LiPF6, and their mixtures, are used as electrolytes for Li/LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 cells. The IL electrolytes show high thermal stability (>400 °C) and non-flammability, and are thus ideal for high-safety applications. At 25 °C, LiTFSI is more suitable than LiPF6 as an IL electrolyte in terms of cell capacity, rate capability, and cyclic stability. The IL electrolytes clearly outperform the conventional organic electrolytes at 50 °C, since the latter decomposes at high voltage and corrodes both the Al current collector and LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4, degrading the electrode performance. At such an elevated temperature, using LiPF6 to partially substitute LiTFSI in the IL electrolyte can effectively suppress Al pitting corrosion and thus improves the cell performance. In the 0.4 M LiTFSI/0.6 M LiPF6 mixed-salt IL electrolyte, an LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 discharge capacity of 115 mA h g−1 (at 0.1 C) is obtained at 50 °C with a high cell voltage of ∼4.7 V.


Viewing a target moving in depth depresses visual sensitivity to depth when test and adapting stimuli simulate motion along closed paths with the same directions of rotation. However, for opposite directions of rotation, sensitivity is either unaffected or increased. This points to two classes of disparity detectors. Either eye's input to a single class of disparity detector consists of the physiological responses to a single direction of horizontal movement.


It is widely regarded that providing students with feedback is central to their learning (Biggs & Tang, 2007). Traditionally feedback has been given to students either in person or in writing, however, due to advancements in technology, audio is now employed by a small minority of educators in Higher Education (Ice et al., 2007; Merry & Orsmond, 2007; Middleton, 2007; Nortcliffe & Middleton, 2007). Audio feedback is a feedback mechanism whereby feedback is given to students via mp3. To date, research on audio feedback has focused on students' perceptions of audio as a feedback mechanism, and its ability to increase students' sense of involvement. However this paper adds to this stream of research by exploring the manner in which students engage with audio feedback. Using data gathered from Business students in the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland, this paper explores how students evaluate audio feedback as a method through which to improve their academic performance. It extends current research by examining students' overall perceptions of audio feedback while also examining whether gender and course level has an impact on perceptions. Findings indicate that while no differences exist between male and female students, significant differences are found between postgraduate and undergraduate students. Age related differences are also explored as well as the number of times students listened to the audio feedback. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of a number of open-ended questions is also discussed. The paper concludes by providing recommendations to practitioners on the use of audio feedback.


Serum and urine total a-amylase isoenzymes values were estimated in two groups of patients, who underwent either elective cholecystectomy and operative cholangiogram (group A- 59 patients) or cholecystectomy without operative cholangiogram (group B 68 patients). Serum and urine total a- amylase and pancreatic isoamylase (p-type) values were statistically significantly increased within the first 24 postoperative hours as compared to the preoperative levels only in group A (p < 0.05). No clinical signs of pancreatitis were observed. Serum lipase alterations did not reach any statistically significant difference in either group. It is concluded that transient hyperamylasaemia after peroperative cholangiogram may be due to a reversible chemical pancreatitis caused by the infused opacifying agent into the common bile duct.


2-D displays present significant visualization deficits and can hinder task performance when accurate perception of depth is required. Navigation of rugged terrain, scouting, and object detection at a distance all present limitations when viewed on traditional 2-D displays. The current investigation presents a novel use of stereo and hyperstereo image pairs to create a 3-D representation of the visual scene. Use of the stereo base pair provides natural depth perception for near-field viewing, while hyperstereo image pairs augment natural depth acuity for distant scenes.


Abstract Three southeastern Ontario lakes have responded differently to human disturbances in their catchments over the past 150 years. Catchments of Round and Long lakes were once subjected to deforestation and apatite mining but currently have no local watershed disturbances. Meanwhile, Hambly Lake has been surrounded by residences since the 1950s. Subfossil chironomid head capsules and diatom valves were identified and enumerated in sediment cores from Hambly and Round lakes, and diatom remains were analyzed from Long Lake sediments. Quantitative reconstructions for chironomid-inferred average hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen (CIDO) and diatom inferred total phosphorus (DITP) were performed. Paleolimnological data indicated that Round Lake was subject to considerable human impacts in the late-1800s, with a dramatic shift from oligotrophic to mesotrophic and eutrophic diatom taxa and the onset of hypolimnetic anoxia. In the past 60 years (ca. 1945-present), Round Lake reverted to pre-anthropogenic settlement conditions in response to the cessation of human activities in the catchment. Long Lake microfossils revealed similar trends to those recorded in Round Lake, probably due to a similar disturbance history and its close geographic proximity. In contrast to the other two study sites, Hambly Lake was naturally mesotrophic prior to human settlement, and despite the development of numerous cottages and residences in the catchment, only minor shifts to slightly more eutrophic chironomid and diatom assemblages occurred. Higher nutrients and hypolimnetic anoxia appear to be natural conditions, and consequently little additional change occurred after the arrival of European settlers. This study illustrates the importance of obtaining long-term data for identifying background limnological conditions when assessing impacts and developing management plans.


The problem of carbon dioxide in several cities in Indonesia is getting higher and requires more focused handling. The city of Tegal, one of the cities in Indonesia located on the Pantura route, has a significant impact on the distribution of CO2 emissions. This research was conducted by modeling and mapping the number of emissions on several roads based on the outcomes of transportation efforts in Tegal City. Arc-GIS is used for analysis and modeling, with an approach to calculating emissions based on the number of vehicles, emission factors, and fuel consumption. The results showed that gasoline-fueled cars and other motorized vehicles based on the mapping model became the CO2 suppliers on every road section. The highest emission distribution was observed on the Tegal City pantura road, which is a national transportation route.


Oxygen affinity of hemoglobin, erythrocyte 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (DPG) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentrations were compared before and after oral administration of vinpocetine (TCV-3B) (15 mg/d), a primarily vasodilating agent, for three weeks in eight patients with vascular dementia of the Biswanger type which is characterized by diffuse myelin pallor and multiple lacunes in the cerebral white matter. After vinpocetine administration, oxygen affinity of hemoglobin (P50) was significantly increased (26.5 +/- 0.55 to 27.6 +/- 0.62 mmHg; mean and standard deviation, p less than 0.05), red blood cell (RBC) ATP concentrations were significantly increased (846 +/- 168 to 1,158 +/- 130 mumol/l RBC, p less than 0.05), while DPG concentrations were unaltered (4.46 +/- 0.48 to 4.59 +/- 0.57 mmol/l RBC). There was a significant positive correlation between the increase of P50 and the increase of erythrocyte ATP concentrations (r = 0.67, p less than 0.05). The effect of vinpocetine of enhancing oxygen release of hemoglobin may offer an additional benefit to its primary vasodilating action in the treatment of vascular dementia of the Binswanger type due to chronic ischemia.


The acute disparity between increasing bandwidth demand and available spectrum has brought millimeter wave (mmWave) bands to the forefront of candidate solutions for the next-generation cellular networks. Highly directional transmissions are essential for cellular communication in these frequencies to compensate for higher isotropic path loss. This reliance on directional beamforming, however, complicates initial cell search since mobiles and base stations must jointly search over a potentially large angular directional space to locate a suitable path to initiate communication. To address this problem, this paper proposes a directional cell discovery procedure where base stations periodically transmit synchronization signals, potentially in time-varying random directions, to scan the angular space. Detectors for these signals are derived based on a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) under various signal and receiver assumptions. The detectors are then simulated under realistic design parameters and channels based on actual experimental measurements at 28 GHz in New York City. The study reveals two key findings: 1) digital beamforming can significantly outperform analog beamforming even when digital beamforming uses very low quantization to compensate for the additional power requirements and 2) omnidirectional transmissions of the synchronization signals from the base station generally outperform random directional scanning.


This article examines the relationship between specific construction project characteristics and the degree and speed that the foremen are able to improvise in response to disruptive events on the jobsite. Specifically, characteristics such as the number of crew members working under the supervision of a foreman, the occupancy status of the project (i.e., occupied or unoccupied) during construction, the stage of completion of the project, and the levels of turbulence, time pressure, cooperation, collaboration, and organization, were examined. Using a multilevel regression modeling approach, an analysis of 244 disruptions reported by 50 foremen was conducted to determine whether the construction project characteristics could predict more or less improvisation and faster or slower improvisation by the foreman. The findings indicate that on construction projects that are rated by the foremen as more organized, the foremen can make more modest improvised decisions to resolve a disruption, but that on construction projects that were rated by the foremen as more collaborative (i.e., involved joint decision-making), a greater degree of improvisation was deployed. In addition, it was found that on sites that were rated by the foremen as more cooperative (i.e., involved greater willingness to help each other), the foremen required more time to improvise their decisions.


The onset of Taylor–Gortler vortices in impulsively decelerating swirl flows is analyzed by using the recently developed, relative stability model. This model takes the growth rate of the kinetic energy of the base state and also that of disturbances into consideration. In the present system the primary transient swirl flow is laminar but for the Reynolds number Re>Rec secondary motion sets in at a certain time. The present model yields the critical Reynolds number of Rec=153. This value is larger than that from the strong stability model, but smaller than that from the propagation theory. For Re>Rec the dimensionless critical time to mark the onset of vortex instabilities, τc, is presented as a function of Re. It is found that the predicted τc value is much smaller than experimental detection time of first observable secondary motion. Therefore, it seems evident that small disturbances initiated at τc require some growth period until they are detected experimentally. Since the present system is a rather ...


This study explores the effect of various sources of information on youth athletes' perceived competence across a sports season. Of interest was how relationship variables (e.g., parent, peer and coach) and motivational variables (e.g., task and ego orientation) affected perceived competence at three-time points during a sports season. Two studies were conducted: A meta-analysis was undertaken to determine current understanding of these relationships within published research literature, and a quantitative study of 182 youth athletes (95 male, 87 female), ranging in age from 6 to 17 years, with an average age of 11.82 was conducted, using a planned missing data design. Both the meta-analysis and the quantitative study found task and ego orientation to have a positive relationship with perceived competence. Results from the meta-analysis also suggested that ego orientation may be differentially related to perceived competence as a function of culture (i.e., individualistic vs collectivist). The quantitative study looked at both between and within-person variability across a sports season. Results suggested that while relational and motivational variables were related to perceived competence in expected ways, perceived competence was also sensitive to changes, relative to the average, of both relationship quality and motivational variables, across a sports season. Results of the present thesis can be used to educate both coaches and parents as to the complex role that significant relationships and motivational climate play in understanding perceived competence in youth athletes.
Keywords: Perceived competence; goal orientations; motivational climates; relationship quality; multi-level model; planned missing data; three-form design.


Why do some economically powerful states build and project military force while others do not? This dissertation argues that domestic institutions and economic interests influence why states project power to compete over resources or access to markets. It proposes that a state's level of interest compatibility with other powerful states determine when she projects power. The theory is tested using a large-N time series cross-sectional design as well as through case studies that analyze how states reacted to a set of exogenous environmental and technological shocks that exposed resources in the Arctic, the North Sea and the South China Sea. The findings have implications for rising powers in Asia, the political effects of climate change in the Arctic, and global energy security. The research design tackles the questions of when and why states project power through case studies that utilize environmental and technological shocks that exogenously expose maritime energy resources and large-N cross- sectional time series analysis. A combination of case studies and quantitative analysis represents the best way to uncover concepts that are difficult to operationalize, such as a state's foreign policy objectives. The quantitative analysis (Chapter 3) hones in on the question of when states build power projection capabilities and the case studies (Chapters 4-5) focus both on when and why states project power. In closing, this dissertation provides an explanation for when and why states project power. The primary contribution of the theory is that it allows us to make ex ante theoretical predictions regarding which states are most likely to project power and what types of objectives they are likely to project power to secure. The central finding is that state type and interest compatibility conditions whether states choose to convert economic power into power projection capabilities. This finding informs the debate over the relationship between economic and military power. The implications of these findings suggest that the United States should more strongly reorient its forces away from Europe and the Western Hemisphere, which are likely to remain cooperative geopolitical environments, and more strongly pivot to Asia


•IDC Study Reveals Tainted Supplements Initial results from a study ordered by the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) show that 15% to 20% of the nutritional supplements sampled contain nonlabeled substances that can produce positive doping tests. The preliminary findings, released in September in an IOC press release, came with a warning for athletes to avoid such products.


Taraba State has the second highest prevalence HIV infection in Nigeria, of 10.5% (NACA, 2015). Increased HIV viral load indicates increase in infectivity and weaker immune system by decrease in CD4 counts. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) helps to reduce the risk of transmission and infectivity of the virus and also helps to improve the health and life expectancy of the patient. This study evaluated the baseline viral load and CD4 values of newly enrolled HIV positive patients; also at three and six months for both those that commenced ART (ARV challenged patients) and those who did not commence ART(ARV naïve patients) and compared these values at three and six months after commencement of ART or not. A prospective longitudinal observational cohort study design was adopted at the Federal Medical Centre, Jalingo, Taraba State, Nigeria. Newly enrolled HIV positive adult patients 18years and above were recruited. Data was obtained from each patient by administration of questionnaires. Intravenous blood samples were collected during clinical visits; processed and analyzed for current HIV Viral load and CD4 counts using the COBAS Ampliprep/TaqmanMechine (Polymerase Chine Reaction) and the Cyflow Counter respectively. Data was analyzed using SPSS statistical software version 18.0. A total of 171 HIV drug naïve adult patients were recruited into this study. The ratio of female (70.2%) to male patients (29.8%) was 2.3:1. Baseline assessment of the 171 enrollees showed 74 patients with CD4 count ≥ 500cells/μl and 97 patients with CD4 count <500cells/μl; females having higher CD4 count than males; p= 0.008. CD4 count and viral load of the 171 ARV naïve patients showed significance at baseline assessment (p<0.0001); then showed no significance at three months assessment for both ARV challenged and ARV naïve groups. There was significance for CD4 and viral load at six months, for both ARV challenged, p = 0. 019 and ARV naïve, p = 0.007groups respectively. Nineteen (19.6%) ARV challenged patients had an improved CD4 count from<500cells/μl at baseline assessment to ≥ 500cells/μl six months on therapy and 40 (41.2%) patients achieved viral suppression of<1000 copies /ml over the period, due to effective use of HAART. Also, 30 (30.9%) ARV challenged patients had CD4 count ≤ 200 cells/μl and 57 (58.7%) had viral load >1000 copies/ml after being on HARRT therapy for six months. This study confirms the importance of CD4 and viral load in monitoring disease progression or regression in HIV infected patients. Research Article Citation: Margaret C Attah, Agatha Ani, Dangana I Attah, et al. Comparison of Viral Load and CD4+ Values of ARV Naïve and ARV Challenged HIV Patients in Taraba State Nigeria. Microbiol Infect Dis. 2018; 2(2): 1-10.


Why don't individuals follow the best information security practices? We address an aspect of this question by focusing on one of the most common authentication methods – passwords. To promote better password habits, security experts consistently recommend the use of password managers as a best practice, but recent research shows their usage rate is low. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence the use of a password manager is important. We contribute to this cause by drawing on information security and technology adoption literature. Survey results from 120 participants with varying numbers of internet accounts yield some counterintuitive findings. As proposed, perceived severity and perceived vulnerability of password loss strongly influenced intent to use password managers. However, perceived ease of use diminished the intent to use password managers, and trust is only partially supported. Our results indicate that 'security' aspects of password managers are more important than 'usability' aspects. The implications of these findings for password management are discussed.


About half of wetlands worldwide have disappeared since 1900, according to Wetlands International, an independent global nonprofit dedicated to the conservation and wise use of wetlands. Wetlands in the United States have been systematically drained for agricultural purposes since the 1700s.

In a new book, Wetland Drainage, Restoration, and Repair (University of Kentucky Press, 2007), Thomas R. Biebighauser, a wildlife biologist for the USDA Forest Service, examines the human relationship with wetlands over time, explaining the rationale and techniques used to drain wetlands in the past and the reasons and techniques for restoring wetlands today.

Biebighauser does not cast stones at those who previously drained wetlands but instead attempts to understand their perspectives and different times. "The drainers of wet land … were extremely dedicated to their cause of converting what they viewed as worthless swampland to acres of great value to their families."

Many different methods have been used to drain wetlands over the years, including wood box ditches, rock channels, clay tiles, open ditches, grassy waterways, directional plowing, and, more recently, plastic drain lines.

"The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) provided extensive technical and financial assistance to landowners who constructed diversion ditches in the 1950s," …


The campaign to desegregate baseball was one of the most important civil rights stories of the 1930s and 1940s. But most of white America knew nothing about this story because mainstream newspapers said little about the color line and less about the efforts to end it. Even today, as far as most Americans know, the integration of baseball revolved around Branch Rickey's signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers' organization in 1945. This book shows how Rickey's move, critical as it may well have been, came after more than a decade of work by black and left-leaning journalists to desegregate the game. Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles and interviews with journalists, Chris Lamb reveals how differently black and white newspapers, and black and white America, viewed racial equality. He shows how white mainstream sportswriters perpetuated the color line by participating in what their black counterparts called a "conspiracy of silence." Between 1933 and 1945, black newspapers and the Communist Daily Worker published hundreds of articles and editorials calling for an end to baseball's color line. The efforts of the alternative presses to end baseball's color line, chronicled for the first time in Conspiracy of Silence, constitute one of baseball's-and the civil rights movement's-great untold stories.


For a power distribution system with distributed generation (DG) units, its fault current and induced overvoltage under abnormal conditions should be taken into account seriously. Inconsideration that applying superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) may be a feasible solution, in this paper, the effects of a voltage compensation type active SFCL on them are studied through theoretical derivation and simulation. The active SFCL is composed of an air-core superconducting transformer and a PWM converter. The magnetic field in the air-core can be controlled by adjusting the converters output current, and then the active SFCLs equivalent impedance can be regulated for current limitation and possible overvoltage suppression. During the study process, in view of the changes in the locations of the DG units connected to the system, the DG units injection capacities and the fault positions, the active SFCLs current-limiting and overvoltage suppressing characteristics are both simulated in MATLAB. The simulation results show that the active SFCL can play an obvious role in restraining the fault current and overvoltage, and it can contribute to avoiding damage on the relevant distribution equipment and improve the systems safety and reliability. The entire system will be implemented by using PV System also.


This paper proposes a methodology to improve the reusability of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software using a program family approach. The usability and the maintainability are significant problems for a developer trying to properly reuse FEA software. Usability is promoted via systematically defined goals, assumptions, theoretical and computational models, definitions, common requirements and variabilities. Maintainability is improved through a component generator and traceability matrices between different portions of the documentation. We present preliminary work on a simple FEA program family for solving beam analysis problems to illustrate how the program family approach can be applied to FEA software.


The present work was performed in order to analyze the influence of the outer corner radius (R) of ECAP die channels on the strain field of billets subjected to ECAP deformation in a Φ = 120o die, employing three different methods: (i) physical simulation, consisting of the direct measurement of deformations of a grid inscribed in longitudinally cut mid-planes of ECAPed billets; (ii) numerical simulation employing an explicit finite element code for large displacements and large plastic deformations, and (iii) calculation by the Iwahashi formula. Materials employed were Al-4%Cu and an eutectic Pb-62Sn alloy, and the dependence of shear strain with R was satisfactorily described using the three methods. The experimental method showed a small deviation from the other two, which was explained making use of the corner die formation concept. Similarly, this concept helped to understand the increase of strain heterogeneity with R. Also, it was shown that large corner radii decrease ECAP pressing loads, facilitating deformation of high strength materials. Finally, the data show that the deformation characteristics of the materials here studied do not exert a measurable influence on the shear strain magnitude and distribution.


Objective
To identify predictors of the effectiveness of hospital accreditation on process performance measures.

Design
A multi-level, longitudinal, stepped-wedge, nationwide study.

Participants
All patients admitted for acute stroke, heart failure, ulcers, diabetes, breast cancer and lung cancer at Danish hospitals.

Intervention
The Danish Healthcare Quality Programme that was designed to create a framework for continuous quality improvement.

Main outcome Measure(s)
Changes in week-by-week trends of hospitals' process performance measures during the study period of 269 weeks prior to, during and post-accreditations. Process performance measures were based on 43 different processes of care obtained from national clinical quality registries. Analyses were stratified according to condition, type of care (i.e. treatment, diagnostics, secondary prevention and patient monitoring) and hospital characteristics (i.e. university affiliation, location, size, experience with accreditation and accreditation compliance).

Results
A total of 1 624 518 processes of care were included. The impact of accreditation differed across the conditions. During accreditation, heart failure and breast cancer showed less improvement than other disease areas. Across all conditions, diagnostic processes improved less rapidly than other types of processes. However, after stratifying the data by hospital characteristics, process performance measures improved more uniformly. In respect of the measures that had an unsatisfactory level of quality, the processes related to diabetes, diagnostics and patient monitoring all responded to accreditation and showed an increased improvement during the preparatory work.

Conclusion
Hospital characteristics were not found to be predictors for the effects of accreditation, whereas conditions and types of care to some extent predicted the effectiveness.


This dissertation investigates thematic unities within Robert Morris's seemingly disparate body of work. It demonstrates the thematic similarities, structural continuities and formal associations used throughout his art despite the great diversity of the media employed. It departs at times from a strictly chronological approach because its primary purpose is to explore how one work begets another or one style morphs into the next.

The research involved extensive archival work studying unpublished correspondence and texts, contracts, drawings and emails, along with traditional sources like books, interviews, lectures and Morris's own published criticism and texts. The author also examined many original artworks or reproductions of unavailable ones.

Chapter One discusses the definition and problem of style, establishment of artistic influences, and Morris's reluctance to accept traditional boundaries. Chapter Two addresses the choreography and its task-oriented vocabulary, and Morris's minimalist sculptures, examining his ideas on process and the phenomenology of perception. Chapter Three is devoted to Morris's concept of space and exploration of the horizontal as a spatial vector. It studies his interest in structural continuity throughout his lead, mirror and felt works, and touches on both the physical space of the sculptures, and the virtual space of the mirrors, as well as the fleeting evanescent space of the steam. His elaborations on "how to make a mark" are considered, too, from the Blind Time drawings, riding on horseback and body-part imprints, to language and the natural world. Chapter Four turns to Morris's philosophical investigations, his studies of language and imagery—some apocalyptic—and his increasing concern with destructive contemporary attitudes. Chapter Five takes up the works of the last two decades, his interest in memory and his growing cultural pessimism.

Finally, analyzing one of the most recent works, the Conclusion makes clear that through its recurrent timeliness, Morris's art achieves a certain sublimity which aims towards a suspension of time—a timelessness.


Purpose: Chemotherapy-induced amenorrhea is a serious concern for women undergoing cancer therapy. This prospective randomized trial evaluated the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analog triptorelin to preserve ovarian function in women treated with chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. Patients and Methods: Premenopausal women age 44 years or younger were randomly assigned to receive either triptorelin or no triptorelin during (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy and were further stratified by age (< 35, 35 to 39, > 39 years), estrogen receptor status, and chemotherapy regimen. Objectives included the resumption of menses and serial monitoring of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and inhibin A and B levels. Results: Targeted for 124 patients with a planned 5-year follow-up, the trial was stopped for futility after 49 patients were enrolled (median age, 39 years; range, 21 to 43 years); 47 patients were treated according to assigned groups with four cycles of adriamycin plus cyclophosphamide alone or followed by four cycles of paclitaxel or six cycles of fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide. Menstruation resumed in 19 (90%) of 21 patients in the control group and in 23 (88%) of 26 in the triptorelin group (P= .36). Menses returned after a median of 5.8 months (range, 1 to 19 months) after completion of chemotherapy in the triptorelin versus 5.0 months (range, 0 to 28 months) in the control arm (P= .58). Two patients (age 26 and 35 years at random assignment) in the control group had spontaneous pregnancies with term deliveries. FSH and inhibin B levels correlated with menstrual status. Conclusion: When stratified for age, estrogen receptor status, and treatment regimen, amenorrhea rates on triptorelin were comparable to those seen in the control group.


Abstract How effective is terrorism? This question has generated lively scholarly debate and is of obvious importance to policy-makers. However, most existing studies of terrorism are not well equipped to answer this question because they lack an appropriate comparison. This article compares the outcomes of civil wars to assess whether rebel groups that use terrorism fare better than those who eschew this tactic. I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of terrorism relative to other tactics used in civil war. Because terrorism is not a tactic employed at random, I first briefly explore empirically which groups use terrorism. Controlling for factors that may affect both the use of terrorism and war outcomes, I find that although civil wars involving terrorism last longer than other wars, terrorist rebel groups are generally less likely to achieve their larger political objectives than are nonterrorist groups. Terrorism may be less ineffective against democracies, but even in this context, terrorists do not win.


The "Development of an existing engraving machine by designing a protection cabin for laser marking"project consists of the achievement of a protection cabin for a marking laser by applying the theory and the experience acquired during the courses in Mechanical Engineering program. Degree project is made with the Maskinteknik i Oskharsham AB by the Mechanical Engineering student, Ahmet Azman and Sabra Meradi. This protection cabin is design for the Deckel GK 21 engraving machine that company already bought it several years ago. The safety requirements for laser protection cabin shown in IEC and ISO standard will be observed. The design process explained in the GETTING DESIGN RIGHT: ASystems Approach book will be followed to achieve this project. Six steps of this method are followed: Define the problem, Measure the needs and set targets, Explore the design space, Optimize design choices, Develop the architecture, Validate the project.


Objective: Word embedding models were most predominantly used in many of the NLP tasks such as document classification, author identification, story understanding etc. In this paper we make a comparison of two Word embedding models for semantic similarity in Tamil language. Each of those two models has its own way of predicting relationship between words in a corpus. Method/Analysis: The term Word embedding in Natural Language Processing is a representation of words in terms of vectors. Word embedding is used as an unsupervised approach instead of traditional way of feature extraction. Word embedding models uses neural networks to generate numerical representation for the given words. In order to find the best model that captures semantic relationship between words, using a morphologically rich language like Tamil would be great. Tamil language is one of the oldest Dravidian languages and it is known for its morphological richness. In Tamil language it is possible to construct 10,000 words from a single root word. Findings: Here we make comparison of Content based Word embedding and Context based Word embedding models respectively. We tried different feature vector sizes for the same word to comment on the accuracy of the models for semantic similarity. Novelty/Improvement: Analysing Word embedding models for morphologically rich language like Tamil helps us to classify the words better based on its semantics.


Since the advent of social media, mediated through smartphones, about a decade ago in Ghana, West Africa, many of the youths have appropriated this modern communicative technology to rejuvenate indigenous cultures as important models for fashioning the pathways of development. About half a decade ago, some young men and women of Asante origin in Ghana embarked on a project of recuperating Asante cultures. These youths saw themselves as responding to the national call, since the mid-2000s, for re-traditionalisation. It was also partly a response to the United Nations' call for alternative development narrative, framed around cultural revivalism, since the 1990s. It equally dovetails with the call of Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, for African Renaissance. Given this continental and trans-continental contexts and the recent coronavirus protocol of social distancing, a group of Asante youth aligned themselves with their chiefs and cultural historians to establish an online community on WhatsApp. Their aim was/is to recuperate the Asante Kotoko Society, which was first established as an offline Society in 1916, to support Asanteman's progress. Thus, this online imagined community has been established to serve as a point of confluence for the teaching, researching, and promoting "relevant" Asante cultures to ensure the socio-economic development of Asanteman and Ghana. Using critical discourse analysis and ethnographic technique of in-depth interviews with key respondents of the Society, I contribute to the discourse on community as I analyse the question: How relevant is online community to offline development?


The growth and organization of the developing brain are known to be influenced by hormones, but little is known about whether disruption of hormones affects cortical regions, such as mPFC. This region is particularly important given its involvement in executive functions and implication in the pathology of many neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we examine the long-term effects of perinatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting compounds, the phthalates, on the mPFC and associated behavior. This investigation is pertinent as humans are ubiquitously exposed to phthalates through a variety of consumer products and phthalates can readily cross the placenta and be delivered to offspring via lactation. Pregnant dams orally consumed an environmentally relevant mixture of phthalates at 0, 200, or 1000 μg/kg/d through pregnancy and for 10 d while lactating. As adults, offspring were tested in an attentional set-shifting task, which assesses cognitive flexibility. Brains were also examined in adulthood for stereological quantification of the number of neurons, glia, and synapses within the mPFC. We found that, independent of sex, perinatal phthalate exposure at either dose resulted in a reduction in neuron number, synapse number, and size of the mPFC and a deficit in cognitive flexibility. Interestingly, the number of synapses was correlated with cognitive flexibility, such that rats with fewer synapses were less cognitively flexible than those with more synapses. These results demonstrate that perinatal phthalate exposure can have long-term effects on the cortex and behavior of both male and female rats. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans globally are exposed on a daily basis to a variety of phthalates, which are endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The effects of phthalate exposure on the developing brain, especially on cognitively relevant regions, such as the mPFC, are not known. Here, we use a rat model of human prenatal exposure to an environmentally relevant mixture of phthalates and find that there is an appreciable reduction in neuron number, synapse number, and size of the mPFC and a deficit in cognitive flexibility. These results may have serious implications for humans given that the mPFC is involved in executive functions and is implicated in the pathology of many neuropsychiatric disorders.


The Internet is the latest in a long succession of communication technologies. The goal of this work is to draw lessons from the evolution of all these services. Little attention is paid to technology as such, since that has changed radically many times. Instead, the stress is on the steady growth in volume of communication, the evolution in the type of traffic sent, the qualitative change this growth produces in how people treat communication, and the evolution of pricing. The focus is on the user, and in particular on how quality and price differentiation have been used by service providers to influence consumer behavior, and how consumers have reacted. There are repeating patterns in the histories of communication technologies, including ordinary mail, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. In particular, the typical story for each service is that quality rises, prices decrease, and usage increases to produce increased total revenues. At the same time, prices become simpler. The historical analogies of this paper suggest that the Internet will evolve in a similar way, towards simplicity. The schemes that aim to provide differentiated service levels and sophisticated pricing schemes are unlikely to be widely adopted.


The structure of active galactic nucleus (AGN) accretion disks on subparsec scales can be probed through free-free absorption of synchrotron emission from the base of symmetric radio jets. For objects in which both jet and counterjet are detectable with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), the accretion disk will cover part of the counterjet and produce diminished brightness whose angular size and depth as a function of frequency can reveal the radial distribution of free electrons in the disk. The nearby (41 Mpc, independent of H0) FR I radio galaxy NGC 4261 contains a pair of symmetric kiloparsec-scale jets. On parsec scales, radio emission from the nucleus is strong enough for detailed imaging with VLBI. We present new Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of NGC 4261 at 22 and 43 GHz, which we combine with previous observations at 1.6 and 8.4 GHz to map absorption caused by an inner accretion disk. The relative closeness of NGC 4261 combined with the high angular resolution provided by the VLBA at 43 GHz gives us a very high linear resolution, approximately 2 × 10-2 pc ≈ 4000 AU ≈ 400 Schwarzschild radii for a 5 × 108 M☉ black hole. The jets appear more symmetric at 1.6 GHz because of the low angular resolution available. The jets are also more symmetric at 22 and 43 GHz, presumably because the optical depth of free-free absorption is small at high frequencies. At 8.4 GHz, neither confusion effect is dominant and absorption of counterjet emission by the presumed disk is detectable. We find that the orientation of the radio jet axis is the same on parsec and kiloparsec scales, indicating that the spin axis of the inner accretion disk and black hole has remained unchanged for at least 106 (and more likely >107) yr. This suggests that a single merger event may be responsible for the supply of gas in the nucleus of NGC 4261. The jet opening angle is between 0.°3 and 20° during the first 0.2 pc of the jet and must be less than 5° during the first 0.8 pc. Assuming that the accretion disk is geometrically and optically thin and composed of a uniform 104 K plasma, the average electron density in the inner 0.1 pc of the disk is 103-108 cm-3. The mass of ionized gas in the inner pc of the disk is 101-103 M☉, sufficient to power the radio source for ~104-106 yr. Equating thermal gas pressure and magnetic field strength gives a disk magnetic field of ~10-4 to 10-2 gauss at 0.1 pc. We include an appendix containing expressions for a simple, optically thin, gas-pressure-dominated accretion disk model that may be applicable to other galaxies in addition to NGC 4261.


We utilize and apply visual design theory to experimen- tally test ways to improve the likelihood that web respondents report date answers in a particular format desired by the researcher, thus reducing possible deleterious effects of error messages or requests for corrections. These experiments were embedded in a series of web surveys of random samples of university students. We seek to examine the sequential and cumulative effects of visually manipulating the size and proximity of the answer spaces, the use of symbols instead of words, the verbal language of the question stem, and the graphical location of the symbolic instruction. Our results show that the successive series of visual language manipulations improve respon- dents' use of the desired format (two digits for the month and four digits for the year) from 45 percent to 96 percent. These results suggest that writing effective questions for web surveys may depend as much or more on the presentation of the answer categories/spaces as the question wording itself.


This paper argues for the use of 'fractals' in theorising sociospatial relations. From a realist position, a nonmathematical but nonmetaphoric and descriptive view of 'fractals' is advanced. Insights from the natural sciences are combined with insights on the position of the observer from Luhmann and notions of assemblages and repetitions from Deleuze. It is argued that the notion of 'fractals' can augment current understanding of sociospatialities in three ways. First, it can pose questions about the scalar position of the observer or the grain of observation; second, as a signifier of particular attributes, it prompts observation and description of particular structuring processes; and third, the epistemic access afforded by the concept can open up possibilities for transformative interventions and thereby inform the same. The theoretical usefulness of the concept is demonstrated by discussing the territory, place, scale, and networks (TPSN) model for theorising sociospatial relations advanced by B Jessop, N Brenner, and M Jones in their 2008 paper "Theorizing sociospatial relations", published in this journal (volume 26, pages 389–401). It is suggested that a heuristic arising from a 'fractal' ontology can contribute to a polymorphous, as opposed to polyvalent, understanding of sociospatial relations.


Heinrich Heine is credited with being the first to apply the word "emancipation" to the cause of freedom and equality for those groups still enslaved by the tyranny of religious and political oppression in the post-revolutionary world of the early 19th century. Though his cosmopolitan thinking embraced the subjugated from Ireland to America, Heine was closest to the fate of his fellow Jews in Europe, and the term emancipation quickly became associated with the political and social movement for Jewish equality. Heine was directly affected by the shifting policies of the Germans states toward legal emancipation of the Jews. In the 1820s he actively participated in the first attempt of Jews to establish a Wissenschaft der Juden. His tortured struggle to reconcile his Jewishness with his calling as a German poet is recorded in writings and letters surrounding his baptism in 1825. Nevertheless, Heine remained aloof from the emancipation movement and was skeptical about the status of Jews in France, who had been emancipated for nearly forty years when Heine arrived in Paris. The roots of Heine's largely negative judgment lie in his observation that the forces of early capitalism were undermining religious faith and that Jewish assimilation into bourgeois society necessitated the abandonment of those fundamental human values that characterize the essence of Judaism. (GP)


The combination of pyridyl ligands and square-planar Pd(II) or Pt(II) cations has proven to be a very reliable recipe for the realization of supramolecular self-assemblies. This tutorial review deals with the design, synthesis and host–guest chemistry of discrete coordination cages built according to this strategy. The focus is set on structures obeying the formula [PdnL2n] (n = 2–4). The most discussed ligands are bent, bis-monodentate bridges having their two donor sites pointing in the same direction. The structures of the resulting cages range from simple globules over intertwined knots to interpenetrated dimers featuring three small pockets instead of one large cavity. The cages have large openings that allow small guest molecules to enter and leave the cavities. Most structures are cationic and thus favour the uptake of anionic guests. Some examples of host–guest complexes are discussed with emphasis on coencapsulation and allosteric binding phenomena. Aside from cages in which the ligands have only a structural role, some examples of functional ligands based on photoand redox-active backbones are presented.


Fluorescent nanoparticles with a novel structure suitable for detecting cancer cells in vitro and in vivo have been prepared. Firstly, a strong, hydrophilic, branched amino polymer was synthesized, and then it was chemically conjugated as much as possible with fluorescein (FAM) to further synthesize a hydrophobic FAM-branched polymer with strong fluorescence. Fluorescein polymer nanoparticles (FPNPs) were then prepared based on hydrophobic interactions of the as-synthesized FAM-branched polymers, and polyacrylic acids (PAAs) were crosslinked on the surface to cover FPNPs and then to prepare PAA surface-crosslinked FPNPs (paa-FPNPs). The as-prepared paa-FPNPs nanoparticles have a fluorescent "core-cover-type" rigid structure and a non-fluorescent flexible structure consisting of the residual chains of the surface-crosslinked PAAs. The paa-FPNPs have four excellent properties as follows: (1) small particle size, a narrow particle distribution and rich negative surface charge; (2) strong fluorescence resulting from the hydrophobic interaction-based aggregation of a large number of the fluorophores conjugated on the branched amino polymers, and from a thin-cover-based weak fluorescence shielding; (3) good protection of the embedded fluorophores against in vivo enzymatic hydrolysis, owing to the outer cover and the negative residual chains of PAAs; (4) weak steric hindrance of the nanoparticle-labeled aptamer recognizing a huge-size target cell. The prepared paa-FPNPs have both a strong fluorescence and a suitable nanoparticle structure for cell imaging. Based on the ligand aptamer labeled by paa-FPNP, this paper reports the sensitive in vitro imaging of cancer cells and long-life in vivo imaging of in situ tumors.


By comparing the methylation pattern of Mspl/Hpall sites in the 5' region of the mouse alpha-foetoprotein (AFP) gene of different cells (hepatoma cells, foetal and adult liver, fibroblasts), we found a correlation between gene expression and unmethylation of a site located in the first intron of the gene. Other sites did not show this correlation. In transfection experiments of unmethylated and methylated AFP-CAT chimeric constructions, we then showed that methylation of the intronic site negatively modulates expression of CAT activity. We also found that a DNA segment centered on this site binds nuclear proteins; however methylation did not affect protein binding.


The controversy about intentional explanation of action concerns how these explanations work. What kind of model allows us to capture the dependency or relevance relation between the explanans, i.e. the beliefs and desires of the agent, and the explanandum, i.e. the action? In this paper, I argue that the causal mechanical model can do the job. Causal mechanical intentional explanations consist in a reference to the mechanisms of practical reasoning of the agent that motivated the agent to act, i.e. to a causally relevant set of beliefs and desires. Moreover, the causal mechanical model can provide in efficient and unproblematic applications, unlike action explanations using ceteris paribus laws or counterfactuals. The drawback of the latter models of explanation is their modal requirement: the explanans must mention or implies sufficient and/or necessary conditions for the explanandum. Such a requirement is too strong when it comes to intentional explanation of action.


OBJECTIVE
Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a slowly growing cancer, which is the most common malignant tumor of the salivary glands. It is claimed that it is a non-inherited cancer. People with family history of ACC are reported extremely rarely. We present patients with suspected hereditary ACC.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Next generation sequencing (NGS) was performed for both RNA and DNA isolated from FFPE material.

RESULTS
In DNA from tumor tissue we detected the mutation in MET gene, in exon 14 c.3029C>T (p.Thr1010Ile). It has never been proven that this mutation may play a role in the pathogenesis of ACC. The most important for our case report seems to be the patient's family history of cancer occurrence which indicates presence of familial cancer aggregation (familial cancer syndrome) and even familial lung cancer.

CONCLUSIONS
ACC is extremely rare; it is difficult to observe a specific genetic pattern and NGS can provide a lot of information about the genetic causes of this disease. Our work shows that the MET p.Thr1010Ile mutation can be associated with the hereditary occurrence of ACC.


The arrhythmogenicity of epinephrine, dopamine, and dobutamine, administered by constant-rate infusion, was determined in vagotomized and nonvagotomized thiamylal-halothane anesthetized dogs. Electrocardiograms and atrioventricular bundle electrograms revealed the development of atrial, junctional, and ventricular arrhythmias. The 3 drugs produced atrial arrhythmias at dosages smaller than those required to produce ventricular arrhythmias. The mean dosages (microgram/kg-1/min-1) required to produce ventricular arrhythmias on duplicate trials in vagotomized dogs were for epinephrine, 0.6 +/- 0.2; dopamine, 22.8 +/- 14.8; and dobutamine, 11.6 +/- 5.2. The corresponding doses for nonvagotomized dogs were for epinephrine, 0.8 +/- 0.3; dopamine, 35.3 +/- 13.5; and dobutamine, 21.9 +/- 13.9. Most ventricular arrhythmias originated from a single focus in the left ventricle. Heart rate and blood pressure were significantly increased immediately before ventricular arrhythmia appeared. We conclude that epinephrine, dopamine, and dobutamine are capable of producing cardiac arrhythmias in vagotomized and nonvagotomized thiamylal-halothane anesthetized dogs and that bilateral vagotomy decreases the dosage of epinephrine, dopamine, and dobutamine required to produce cardiac arrhythmias.


Identifying vulnerability to perinatal emotional distress is an important public health issue. According to Beck's Cognitive Theory (Beck, 1964; 2002), specific dysfunctional attitudes interact with specific stressors, such as pregnancy or childbirth, increasing risk for emotional distress. According to the Self-Regulatory Executive Functioning Model (Wells & Matthews, 1994; 1996), the appraisal and regulation of one's thoughts, known as metacognition, are more responsible for maintaining and exacerbating emotional distress than maladaptive cognitive content. This has yet to be explored in the perinatal period.
The aim of this thesis was to explore the role of cognitive and metacognitive factors in increasing risk for perinatal depression and anxiety. To accomplish this, a psychometric exploration into the Pregnancy Related Beliefs Questionnaire (Moorhead, Owens, & Scott, 2003) was conducted, which resulted in a valid and reliable measure of maladaptive attitudes specific to motherhood that was found to increase risk for the onset and severity of postnatal depression. Finally, the independent role of metacognitions in increasing risk for perinatal emotional distress was explored, outside of the contribution of dysfunctional attitudes specific to motherhood, which revealed that metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability and danger of one's thoughts independently predicted the onset and severity of antenatal emotional distress, after controlling for baseline emotional distress and maladaptive attitudes about motherhood; however metacognition did not independently predict postnatal emotional distress.
The results suggest, during the third trimester, when anxieties about the birth of the baby are high, beliefs that thoughts are uncontrollable and dangerous can lead to increased emotional distress. In the weeks after the baby is born, rigid attitudes about motherhood and what makes a good or a bad mother become more relevant, increasing risk for postnatal emotional distress. These results support the relevance of both cognitive and metacognitive approaches to understanding perinatal emotional distress and suggests that their strength as predictors is dependent on context. The limitations and implications are also discussed.


High torque ripple is one of the major disadvantages of Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM). Although there are several publications in the literature addressing the full or partial solution to the problem for conventional SRM, no publication exists for the torque ripple reduction of recently emerging fully pitched SRM. This paper deals with finding best dimension set for a particular stator and rotor pole tip shape aiming to reduce torque ripple in both short pitched and fully pitched SRMs. Five new stator and rotor pole tip structures have been investigated and compared with conventional pole tip. Analyses have been performed with the finite element (FE) models of 6/4 3-phase short pitched and fully pitched SRM with unipolar excitation. With the proposed pole tips, torque ripple is reduced by 24.1% in short pitched SRM for 10A phase current and by 22.6% in fully pitched SRM for 5.59A phase current.


In the current literature of differential games, most studies formulate optimal strategies in feedback (Markovian) equilibriums and ignore repeated interactions among players. In many real-world settings, however, the competitors' action history may have impacts on a firm's decisions. This paper considers the production strategies for several competing firms in an oligopolistic industry. A firm's profit is determined by a continuous-time stochastic demand shock process together with the production strategies of all firms in the industry. A firm's decision is only observable by other firms after an information time lag, induced by the production lead time. We study a history-dependent trigger strategy, whereby firms adopt the cooperative strategy until a firm fails to do so, and thereafter punish the deviating firm by applying the noncooperative equilibrium. We show that, as long as the information time lag is less than a threshold, the trigger strategy is both a Nash equilibrium and a Pareto optimum. We obtain the analytical solutions to the threshold and investigate how the threshold is affected by market growth rate, market volatility, the number of competitors in the industry, and the risk-free rate. Moreover, we investigate the repeated games in a continuous-time setting and provide a tractable approach to derive the trigger-type repeated equilibrium in a Nash-Cournot framework. While the derivation of equilibrium strategies in a stochastic continuous-time setting can be quite challenging, we obtain a solution that is not only analytically simple but also practically applicable.


Between ca. 1885 and 1927, Gabriele d'Annunzio and Matilde Serao became friends and contributed to journals in Rome and Naples; they met authors in Europe (especially in France), exchanged opinions about their works and also about their private life. She has been a vibrant constant on Vate's experience: she gave him advices and protected his affair with Eleonora Duse, who was also Matilde's friend. Serao's collection of letters, kept by Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone Riviera, explains some contours of a crucial friendship.


The paper illustrates that, when analysing the dynamics of the digital divide, the answer to the seemingly simple question 'Is the digital divide increasing, decreasing, or is it constant?' is not straightforward. An integral methodological tool that comprehensively addresses this question will be introduced. This methodological approach is based on the assumption that none of the existing statistical measures truly communicates the essence of a certain digital divide phenomenon (absolute measures, relative measures and S-time-distance are considered). In addition, even the simultaneous reporting of all three measures is insufficient. To monitor and interpret the dynamics of the digital divide it is therefore very important to explicitly take into account future scenarios of ICT diffusion among the observed subjects (e.g. population segments, countries…). We have developed these scenarios within the broad framework of the diffusion theory (Rogers, 1962, 2003), but with a distance from two of its implicit assumptions related to the deterministic conceptualisation of the diffusion process: the form of the diffusion function and the anticipated level of the final penetration rate. It is argued that the proper measure can only be provided if we anticipate and take into account the full distribution functions of the compared subjects or population segments and the location of the subject at a certain point in time.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of experiences of anti-social behaviour in LGBTIQ+ youth in university settings.

Design/methodology/approach

The discussion reflects on qualitative interviews with LGBTIQ+ young people studying at university (n=16) exploring their experiences of anti-social behaviour including harassment, bullying and victimisation in tertiary settings.

Findings

The findings demonstrate that attention should be paid to the complex nature of anti-social behaviour. In particular, LGBTIQ+ youth documented experiences of microaggressions perpetrated by other members of the LGBTIQ+ community. Using the taxonomy of anti-social behaviour against LGBTIQ+ people developed by Nadal et al. (2010, 2011), the authors build on literature that understands microaggressions against LGBTIQ+ people as a result of heterosexism, to address previously unexplored microaggressions perpetrated by other LGBTIQ+ people.

Research limitations/implications

Future research could seek a larger sample of participants from a range of universities, as campus climate may influence the experiences and microaggressions perpetrated.

Practical implications

Individuals within the LGBTIQ+ community also perpetrate microaggressions against LGBTIQ+ people, including individuals with the same sexual orientation and gender identity as the victim. Those seeking to respond to microaggressions need to attune their attention to this source of anti-social behaviour.

Originality/value

Previous research has focused on microaggressions and hate crimes perpetrated by non-LGBTIQ+ individuals. This research indicates the existence of microaggressions perpetrated by LGBTIQ+ community members against other LGBTIQ+ persons. The theoretical taxonomy of sexual orientation and transgender microaggressions is expanded to address LGBTIQ+ perpetrated anti-social behaviour.


Behavioural genetics aims to explain in genetic and molecular units mental dysfunctions that carry heavy societal burdens, and behavioural patterns that are pertinent to a vast array of an individual's social competences. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to briefly assess the current conceptual and technological framework of this branch of experimentation, and to remind of its contextualization in contemporary society. Medicalizing forces in our society increasingly bring non-pathological conditions under the scrutiny of medicine and genetics. Reflexivity is required among practitioners of behavioural genetics, who need to be aware of how social norms and context can influence the selection of traits and behaviours as objects of their investigations.


Background Healthcare organisations are increasingly placing the onus on care providers to lead change initiatives to improve patient care. This requires care providers to perform tasks in addition to their core job roles and often outside of their formal training. The existing literature provides few insights regarding the functions required of change leaders in healthcare organisations. Objective To identify the core functions required of effective change leaders in healthcare organisations. Design Qualitative interview study. Participants Data were collected from semistructured interviews with 31 individuals employed by a large cancer centre in a variety of different positions (eg, surgeons, anaesthesiologists, nurse anaesthetists, nurses, project consultants and research coordinators) who had been involved in successful quality improvement initiatives. Results Using inductive content analysis, we identified six core pillars of leading change, which are supported by a foundation of effective communication. Within these six pillars, there were 12 functions, including explain why, demonstrate value, create consensus, align efforts, generate enthusiasm, motivate commitment, institute structure, explain how, facilitate taskwork, promote accountability, enable adjustment and sustain effort. Our model offers unique insights on leading sustainable change in healthcare organisations. Conclusion Using inductive content analysis of semistructured interviews, we have identified 12 important change leader functions and have organised them into a conceptual framework for leading change in healthcare. Individuals involved in leading change initiatives or developing training programmes to help others become effective change leaders can use this framework to ensure they are comprehensively addressing the necessary tasks for sustainable change.


The need for a theory is grounded on the heterogeneity of medicine: of basic situation, of medical subsystems and of praxis. The relationship between theory and practice in medicine should be considered as a task of theoretical reflection, beyond contexts, application and orientation. As a theory of theories--metatheory--its model lies closer to that of "action sciences" than of "object sciences", considered as paradigmatic forms of medicine. The relevance of these concepts to psychiatry is illustrated on the basis of the influence of behavioral sciences upon biomedicine, whose advancement rests with psychiatry.


In this study, electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesting by using metamaterial absorber is numerically explained. Operation frequency is 2.40 GHz since it is the industrial scientific and medical (ISM) band. This band is especially chosen due to most of the customer electronic devices are working in this band. Split ring resonator that have two splits on it used in this study, chip resistors are placed on these splits for wireless energy transfer to the devices. 83.6% efficient electromagnetic energy harvesting is theoretically realized.


Our daily life is realized by the complex orchestrations of diverse brain functions including perception, decision, and action. One of the central issues in cognitive neuroscience is to reveal the complete representations underlying such diverse functions. Recent studies have revealed representations of natural perceptual experiences using encoding models1–5. However, there has been little attempt to build a quantitative model describing the cortical organization of multiple active, cognitive processes. Here, we measured brain activity using functional MRI while subjects performed over 100 cognitive tasks, and examined cortical representations with two voxel-wise encoding models6. A sparse task-type encoding model revealed a hierarchical organization of cognitive tasks, their representation in cognitive space, and their mapping onto the cortex. A cognitive factor encoding model utilizing continuous intermediate features by using metadata-based inferences7 predicted brain activation patterns for more than 80 % of the cerebral cortex and decoded more than 95 % of tasks, even under novel task conditions. This study demonstrates the usability of quantitative models of natural cognitive processes and provides a framework for the comprehensive cortical organization of human cognition.


Abstract. A digital ionosonde, of the type known as Canadian Advanced Digital Ionosonde (CADI), has been in routine operation at Sao Jose dos Campos (23.2° S, 45.9° W; dip latitude 17.6° S), Brazil, since August 2000. A new CADI was installed at Palmas (10.2° S, 48.2° W; dip latitude 5.5° S), Brazil, in April 2002. The two CADIs are part of a new network being established in a collaborative program between UNIVAP and CEULP/ULBRA, to study the equatorial and low-latitude ionospheric regions in Brazil. In this paper we present and discuss the effects of the space weather events during 17-20 April 2002, as evidenced by the ionospheric parameter changes from simultaneous observations at Sao Jose dos Campos and Palmas. A comparison of the observed ionospheric parameters (h'F, hpF2 and foF2) at the two stations, separated only by about 1460km, shows both similarities and differences associated with the geomagnetic disturbances. Also, a comparison of the observed F-region parameters with the ASPEN-TIMEGCM model results is presented. The model results show reasonable agreement during the quiet period of observations, but some discrepancies have been observed during the geomagnetic disturbances.


ABSTRACT Selective solid-phase extraction of carbendazim from water, fruit, and vegetables is reported using a molecularly imprinted polymer that was synthesized by precipitation polymerization using carbendazim as template, methacrylamide and methacrylic acid as the functional monomers, ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate as the cross-linker, and acetonitrile as the porogen. An analytical methodology was developed based on the enrichment of the samples by the molecularly imprinted polymer by solid-phase extraction, and the determination of carbendazim by high-performance liquid chromatography. The parameters affecting on the extraction efficiency of molecularly imprinted polymer were evaluated to optimize selective preconcentration from the samples. Using the optimized conditions, the developed molecularly imprinted polymer–methacrylamide–solid-phase extraction showed a maximum adsorption capacity of 28.32 mg g−1 with an imprinting factor of 2.69. The binding equilibrium constant of the methacrylamide molecularly imprinted polymer for carbendazim was 998.7 L mmol−1. The developed method was used for the quantification of carbendazim in tap, lake, and well water, fruits, and vegetables. The concentrations of carbendazim in all samples were below the European legal limits. Molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction showed superior efficiency for carbendazim compared to nonimprinted polymer solid-phase extraction.


Allergic rhinitis is one of the most common chronic diseases in all age groups. It is an IgE-mediated allergic inflammation of the nasal airways and is characterized by sneezing, swelling, and inflammation of the nasal mucosa as well as itchy and watery eyes. Laboratory tests used in the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis include allergy skin tests, specific IgE measurements, and imaging studies. The management of allergic rhinitis consists of environmental control, pharmacologic management, and immunotherapy. ABSTRACT


Structure-from-Motion can achieve accurate reconstructions of urban scenes. However, reconstructing the inside and the outside of a building into a single model is very challenging due to the lack of visual overlap and the change of lighting conditions between the two scenes. We propose a solution to align disconnected indoor and outdoor models of the same building into a single 3D model. Our approach leverages semantic information, specifically window detections, in multiple scenes to obtain candidate matches from which an alignment hypothesis can be computed. To determine the best alignment, we propose a novel cost function that takes both the number of window matches and the intersection of the aligned models into account. We evaluate our solution on multiple challenging datasets.


The ability of an injected lithium granule to promptly trigger an edge localized mode (ELM) has been established in multiple experiments. By horizontally injecting granules ranging in diameter from 200 microns to 1 mm in diameter into the low field side of EAST H-mode discharges we have determined that granules with diameter  >600 microns are successful in triggering ELMs more than 95% of the time. It was also demonstrated that below 600 microns the triggering efficiency decreased roughly with granule size. Granules were radially injected from the outer midplane with velocities ~80 m s−1 into EAST upper single null discharges with an ITER like tungsten monoblock divertor. These granules were individually tracked throughout their injection cycle in order to determine their efficacy at triggering an ELM. For those granules of sufficient size, ELM triggering was a prompt response to granule injection. By simulating the granule injection with an experimentally benchmarked neutral gas shielding (NGS) model, the ablatant mass deposition required to promptly trigger an ELM is calculated and the fractional mass deposition is determined.


With the total fish production of 10.8 million tones today, its
demand in India has been increasing consistently with the increased
'income of the consumers and their growing health consciousness. It is
estimated that to meet the domestic demand the country requires additional
10 million tons offish by 2050. To maintain the growth pace of the sector,
the fisheries and aquaculture, therefore, need to tackle the challenges of
resource competition, water scarcity, climate change, growing disease
problems and several other technical, environmental and social issues.
Climate change impacts such as variations in rainfall and temperature,
drought, extreme weather events and changes in oceanographic features,
affecting the fisheries resources, farming conditions, fishery distribution
and habitat changes, have been found to be quite significant and alarming.
Therefore, identification of the vulnerabilities associated with climate
change events on fishery resources and coming up with resilience measures
as well as adaptation strategies are urgent necessities. An attempt has been
made to collate and synthesize information on future climate change impacts
and challenges posed on the fisheries and aquaculture sector and explain
various mechanisms for addressing these challenges. Immediate necessity
- - of developing an action plan to mitigate the impact of such climate change
scenario in fisheries and aquaculture has been emphasized. Further, the
paper also envisioned the use of Representative Concentrafion Pathway.
(RCP) scenarios (in 2030,2050 and 2080) developed by the IPCC in concert
with predictive modelling techniques to gauge the intensity of future changes
likely to occur in the fisheries sector.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

SGI-110, is a novel second generation DNA hypomethylating agent, which shows promising single agent activity in leukaemia patients ([NCT01261312][1]) and is currently under investigation as a priming agent in solid tumors. There is evidence that the acquisition of platinum resistance in ovarian cancer is associated with DNA methylation changes that result in epigenetic silencing of specific genes. Pre-clinical studies suggest that DNA hypomethylating agents can reverse such resistance. SGI-110 is currently in a Phase II clinical trial in combination with carboplatin, in platinum-resistant recurrent ovarian cancer patients ([NCT01696032][2]). SGI-110 is a dinucleotide of decitabine and deoxyguanosine, which is resistant to modification by cytidine deaminase: a common pathway of decitabine metabolism and deactivation.

We demonstrated that SGI-110 conferred global LINE1 de-methylation and re-expression of epigenetically silenced genes in a panel of ovarian cancer cell lines. We identified three cell lines, A2780, OVCAR8 and OAW28, which were sensitised to cisplatin following SGI-110 treatment (4-fold, 9-fold and 3-fold sensitisation, respectively). It has previously been demonstrated that epigenetic silencing of the mismatch repair protein MLH1 contributes to the cisplatin resistance of A2780 cells. Using pyrosequencing, we confirmed MLH1 promoter hypermethylation (96.2% methylation) and silencing of MLH1 expression in A2780 cells. Treatment with 0.1 µM SGI-110 conferred 25% MLH1 promoter de-methylation and MLH1 re-expression. We demonstrated that MLH1 is not epigenetically silenced in OVCAR8 or OAW28 cells. This suggests that the cisplatin resistance of these cell lines are due to distinct epigenetic mechanisms, which we are currently investigating.

We assessed SGI-110 activity in an in vivo A2780 xenograft model. Mice bearing subcutaneous xenografts were treated with SGI-110 (2 mg/kg, s.c, daily x5), either as single agent or prior to treatment with cisplatin (2 mg/kg, or 4 mg/kg cisplatin i.p). Cisplatin treatment alone had no anti-tumor activity. Single agent SGI-110 conferred moderate anti-tumor activity. However, the combination of SGI-110 with 4 mg/kg cisplatin, conferred even greater anti-tumor activity than either agent alone (p<0.05). Since single agent cisplatin had no anti-tumor activity, this demonstrates that priming with SGI-110 reversed the intrinsic cisplatin resistance of the A2780 tumors. SGI-110 conferred 11% LINE1 de-methylation, 2.2% MLH1 promoter de-methylation and a 3-fold increase in MLH1 mRNA levels in tumors.

These data suggest that SGI-110 can reverse the cisplatin resistance of ovarian cancer models by restoring the expression of epigenetically silenced genes and supports our ongoing Phase II trial evaluating SGI-110 in combination with carboplatin, in platinum-resistant recurrent ovarian cancer patients

Citation Format: Joanne M. Munck, John Lyons, Neil T. Thompson, Nicola G. Wallis, Pietro Taverna. The DNA hypomethylating agent SGI-110, reverses the platinum resistance of ovarian cancer models. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3756. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3756

 [1]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=CLINTRIALGOV&access_num=NCT01261312&atom=%2Fcanres%2F74%2F19_Supplement%2F3756.atom
 [2]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=CLINTRIALGOV&access_num=NCT01696032&atom=%2Fcanres%2F74%2F19_Supplement%2F3756.atom


This article focuses on the commercialization of urban water services in Zambia. It aims to demonstrate the tension between cost recovery and service extension when water sector reforms combine investment cuts with price increases. It is argued that in low-income economies where infrastructure limitations are serious and poverty is widespread, heavy reliance on 'tariff rationalization' with low levels of investment can lead to reduced access to water and render water charges unaffordable. Reforms to public services can prove futile in the absence of upfront resources for investment in the restoration and extension of the existing infrastructure. In many ways, Zambia typifies other low-income economies; this study thus offers useful lessons for them.


Traditionally irony has been researched as a verbal mode of communicating non-literal meaning. Yet, the extant literal/non-literal meaning oriented research provided conf licting evidence and failed to explain how irony vs. non-irony is processed. The dominant literal/nonliteral meaning approach hasn't accounted for the role of attitudinal non-propositional contents so crucially involved in irony communication and comprehension. Employed to communicate indirectly, on top of non-literal meaning, irony serves to convey implicit attitudes: emotional load non-propositionally attached to the propositional contents. The role of emotional contents implicitly communicated by irony has not been acknowledged in irony research so far. This paper reviews irony and attitude research, focusing on the nonpropositional, emotional contents, aiming to bridge the propositionalnon-propositional meaning gap in irony research. Neuroimaging and behavioral evidence showing that emotional load profoundly inf luences communicative contents processing, priming its computation and determining its processing patterns, is presented, and its role for irony processing is highlighted.


ESP (evolution-based standard cell placement) is a program package designed to perform standard cell placement including macro-block placement capabilities. It uses the novel heuristic method of simulating an evolutionary process to minimize the cell interconnection wire length. While achieving comparable results to popular simulated annealing algorithms, ESP usually requires less CPU time. A concurrent version designed to run on a network of loosely coupled processors, such as workstations connected via Ethernet, has also been developed. For medium to large circuits (>250 cells per processor) concurrent ESP achieves linear speedup. >


Learning to count is a central strand to the mathematical development area of the Foundation Stage Curriculum in England and Wales. Five teachers from five nurseries in one local education authority within West Yorkshire were recorded between December 2002 and June 2003. The main data for the study was taken from 21 number focus activities recorded between the teachers and small groups of children, aged 3-4 years. Conversation Analysis was used to determine the language and interaction involved, considering both children and teachers' contributions to counts and to what came before and after counts.

The study found that the teachers were responsible for creating the conversational contexts for counting as well as being involved in the counting itself. The collaboration between teachers and children in counts included distinctive uses of intonation in ways that emphasised the status of numbers in the count sequence and the importance of the last word. Following counts, the study identified ways in which the quantitative meaning of counting could be extended or left implicit. This study depicts counting as a fully interactive activity that contrasts with the image portrayed in much of previous literature where children count independently and opportunities for teachers' participation are under-specified and implicitly passive.


Science advances through rich, scholarly discussion. More than ever before, digital tools allow us to take that dialogue online. To chart a new future for open publishing, we must consider alternatives to the core features of the legacy print publishing system, such as an access paywall and editorial selection before publication. Although journals have their strengths, the traditional approach of selecting articles before publication ("curate first, publish second") forces a focus on "getting into the right journals," which can delay dissemination of scientific work, create opportunity costs for pushing science forward, and promote undesirable behaviors among scientists and the institutions that evaluate them. We believe that a "publish first, curate second" approach with the following features would be a strong alternative: authors decide when and what to publish; peer review reports are published, either anonymously or with attribution; and curation occurs after publication, incorporating community feedback and expert judgment to select articles for target audiences and to evaluate whether scientific work has stood the test of time. These proposed changes could optimize publishing practices for the digital age, emphasizing transparency, peer-mediated improvement, and post-publication appraisal of scientific articles.


Crit Care Med 2016 • Volume 44 • Number 12 (Suppl.) hours. Day 10 of admission, the patient was improving and remained afebrile, but blood and lead cultures returned positive for aerobic Actinomycete highly suspicious for Nocardia. The antibiotic regimen was changed to trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole 5mg/kg IV every 12 hours. Repeat blood cultures drawn on day eight of admission remained negative. On day 12 of admission, a transesophageal echocardiogram was completed during re-implantation of permanent pacemaker which did not demonstrate evidence of endocarditis. Intravenous trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole was changed to oral therapy at 2 DS tablets twice daily. Results: Treatment with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and device removal resulted in successful clearance of Nocardia.


1) There is no question a brain phenomenon exists, commonly supposed as consciousness. But there is no scientifically agreed definition of it, or what it does. If the universe is wholly physical, it is incumbent upon any theory to demonstrate how consciousness can be physical and what precise role it plays in brain function.

2) In recent years I have proposed that consciousness be replaced by brain-sign. Brain-sign, the brain phenomenon, arises moment-by-moment from the causal orientation of the brain as interpreted by the brain. Its biophysical role is to facilitate communication between brains in collective action by establishing the common features of the world of the joint causal orientations, for brains are physical organs isolated in the body. Thus the world of action comes into being; but it is of course a neural construct.

3) Mental states are a prescientific myth, and their pursuit by neuroscience is counterproductive. The supposition that (for example) we 'see' as a mental faculty, or the brain sees, are errors. But it is not that the brain phenomenon is an illusion, as some authors propose, or that the brain tricks us. As yet science offers no appropriate model. Once established, mathematics is of use.

4) Brains are causal organs, not knowledge organs. In evolutionary development, the ability of isolated brains to communicate in joint action has improved survival chances, and facilitated inter-organism behavioural complexity, which in humans has transformed command of the environment, particularly in the last four hundred years with the emergence of science.

5) Explication of the theory does not involve the problematic notion of subjectivity. There is no mental world. The supposed mental subject, the 'sense' that we exist and command our actions, is each brain's identification of this organism in joint behavioural action. That is, it is part of the communication of brains and, as a sign, potentially identifiable in brain structure. (Signs are intrinsically physical and biologically ubiquitous.) Thus the presentation outline demonstrates that the process of interaction can be described in wholly scientific terms. Indeed, it is the fact of brain-sign that allows the communication of science itself.

6) The three components of brain-sign are (i) categories-of-the-world, (ii) categories-of-interaction, and (iii) brain-sign language. Each is derived from the causal orientation, and are established from infancy. They have no causal power for the host organism, but are the means of interneural communication. The first establishes the world of interaction; the second portrays the reaction of the organism to the world, including itself as organism; the third is the means of altering another brain's causal orientation. All these elements arise moment-by-moment from the brain's causal orientation. They coexist, but they are not, as unconscious mental states, an alternative domain. How this takes place is the question for neuroscience.


Goosefish islet secretion granules were isolated from sucrose homogenates by centrifugation. The morphology of the fractions was determined by electron microscopy. Studies on the stability of the secretion granules revealed them to be sensitive to pH and deoxycholate. The secretion granule proteins were subjected to electrophoresis in polyacrylamide gels, and the resultant bands were characterized by a number of stains and by immunoassay of insulin. These procedures showed that the granule fraction had a heterogeneous configuration consisting of lipid, carbohydrate and protein. One band containing much of the insulin activity did not show the ability to stain with aldehyde fuchsin, possibly indicating a different character of insulin.


Recent advances in molecular biology and technology have made it possible to monitor the expression levels of virtually all genes simultaneously. As the tools for gene expression profiling have become more widely available, the number of investigators applying this technology in hypertension research, as in other fields of biomedical research, has grown rapidly. At the same time, numerous articles have been published that discuss the technical aspects of gene profiling and its promise for advancing research on the pathogenesis and treatment of multiple clinical disorders. However, much of the research carried out with gene expression profiling has been of a correlational or descriptive nature, and the true value of this technology is unclear. Despite the initial wave of enthusiasm for gene expression profiling, its actual utility for studying multifactorial disorders like hypertension remains to be established. In this review, we offer a critical perspective on the use of gene expression profiling in hypertension research and discuss some emerging strategies for taking this technology beyond the limits of correlational and descriptive studies. (Hypertension. 2003;41:3-8.)


Abstract The effect of Salicylic Acid (SA) in inducing resistance in groundnut plants against Alternaria alternata was investigated. Foliar application of SA at the concentration of 1 mM significantly reduced the leaf blight disease intensity and increased the pod yield under glasshouse conditions. Changes in the activities of phenylalanine ammonium lyase, chitinase β-1,3 glucanase and in phenolic content on groundnut after application of SA and inoculation with A. alternate were studied. In SA-treated leaves (plants) an increase in phenolic content was observed five days after challenge inoculation with A. alternata in groundnut plants pretreated with SA. There was a marked increase in chitinase and pathogen inoculation in SA-treated leaves. In chitinase, β-1,3 glucanase activities were observed in response to plants with an increase in SA treated leaves. Foliar applications of SA-induced in peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase activities were observed upon challenge inoculation with pathogen.


On the Schlieren photograph,a continuous ultrasonic Gaussian beam and its nonspecularly reflected beams [Chin.Phys.Lett.16 (1999)819] always have limited visual-width,although the theoretical spatial distribution of the sound field is a continuous function.To study this problem,the first step is to investigate the visual-width of the beam on the photograph related to the sound pressure at the centre of the beam by the threshold of the optical system caused by the refraction of light;the second step is to explain the visual-width of nonspecularly reflected field.By applying a relevant threshold,checked by the visual width of the incident beam,to cut the theoretical curves of the reflected sound field,one can find the visual-width of the two reflected beams and the gap between them correspond to that on the Schlieren photograph.


The growth of the dinoflagellate, Scrippsiella sp. from Narragansett Bay, USA and the chain-forming benthic diatom, Melosira cf. moniliformis from Kendari Bay, Indonesia was evaluated under optimized laboratory conditions to investigate potential new candidates for shrimp aquaculture hatchery feeds. Isolation of microalgae was performed using capillary pipets in f/8-Si for Scrippsiella sp. and f/2 for M. cf. moniliformis. Isolated cells were placed in an incubator with a photoperiod of 12:12 hour (light : dark cycle), at light intensities of 62-89 μmol photons.m-2.s and at temperature of 20oC. Microalgae cells were cultured in 150-mL Erlenmeyer flasks containing 100 mL of f/2-Si medium for Scrippsiella spin triplicates and in 50-mL culture tubes containing 20 mL of f/2 medium for M. cf. moniliformis in four replicates. The cells in culture flasks were used in cell counting experiments while those in tubes were for fluorometer trials. Growth evaluation was conducted every 2-3 days. The diatom, M. cf. moniliformis was in logarithmic phase when observed at 2 to 7 days after inoculation and showed a high growth rate (μ = 0.52 day-1) and high division rate (k = 0.76 day-1, 1 division every 1.3 days). Logarithmic phase of Scrippsiella in culture flasks was started on day 7 to 30 (μ = 0.17 day-1 and k = 0.25 day-1 or 1 division every 4 days). In culture tubes, Scrippsiella sp. reached logarithmic phase at day 21 to 47 (μ = 0.12 day-1 and k = 0.18 day-1, 1 division every 5.65 days). This study indicates that M. cf. moniliformis can be used for aquaculture hatcheries feed but further study for the nutrition composition is needed. Scrippsiella sp. is potentially toxic for aquaculture at high densities, therefore they should be assessed carefully if used for aquaculture feeds.


We report here on gallium nanoparticle phase change memory functionality, demonstrating that data can be written to individual bits within an array of nanoparticles by a focused electron beam and read-out via measurements of cathodoluminescent (CL) emission, thus providing a new conceptual basis for the implementation of high-density phase change data storage. The marked change in the optical properties of gallium nanoparticles with their solid (state '0') to liquid ('1') phase transition, and the substantial overcooling displayed by the liquid provide a basis for bistable memory functionality. Experiments were performed on a film of 80 nm diameter gallium nanoparticles grown on the core area of a cleaved optical fibre tip inside the chamber of a scanning electron microscope. Significant changes in visible cathodoluminescent emission intensity are observed in selected regions of the particle film where phase switching is induced by single pulse, low fluence (200 fJ/nm2) electron beam excitation.